Post navigation

Numbers and how we feel about them

As loyal readers know. Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL) was selected by my publisher, Penguin, as one of their 75 all time great books to celebrate their 75th anniversary. Yay.

As you may know from looking at my 65th birthday picture in a prior post, I’ve lost weight. Yay. But it now bounces around in a 3 pound range and this morning’s bounce was up. Boo.

At the point of reissue in 2008, Your Money or Your Life was in the top 100 on Amazon. Yay. This morning it was in the top 5000. Boo. Unless you’re an author whose book is in the top 100,000 in which case my numbers are a Yay.

At the top of the market the house I’ve co-owned for 25 years was worth 6 times what we invested. Yay. Today, in the down market, it’s worth 4 times. Boo.

The point being, we react emotionally to measures going up and down. One of Joe Dominguez’s early insights on Wall Street is that those investerors who took a long view didn’t react to short term fluctuations.

This is what YMOYL-ers know too. They have what we call an “internal yardstick for fulfillment” – they know what they, their money and their stuff is worth in terms of values, not value, and develop a peaceful relationship with money.

And BTW, in terms of numbers, with Fall in the air I am restarting my teleclasses and I find I have a lot to say about money, the economy, happiness and enoughness. So you’ll be getting 2-3 posts a week. Hope you find them valuable. As in values! and maybe even some ideas to stretch your dollars.